Copyright is a form of intellectual property which protects original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works; the arrangements of published editions of these; sound recordings; films; and “communication works” such as webcasts. In New Zealand, copyright is automatically applied when a work is created. The creator is usually the owner, except where the work is commissioned and paid for (the commissioner becomes the owner) or created in the course of employment (the creator’s employer becomes the owner), or where a contract stipulates otherwise. The duration of copyright varies — works usually enter the public domain either 50 years after they are created, 50 years after they are first made available to the public, or 50 years after the creator’s death. 
	Copyright provides owners with exclusive rights, such as to the copying, performance, and communication of works, as well as the right to grant licenses for these activities. Copyright Licensing New Zealand can also sell licenses to educational facilities, businesses and government departments on behalf of owners. Copyright also protects particular moral rights of authors and directors, including the right to not have a work falsely attributed to them.
However, there are various exceptions to the Copyright Act, where restricting or limiting the rights of copyright holders has been determined to be in the public good. Many of these exceptions are general; “prescribed” libraries, as described in the Act, receive additional benefits such as the limited ability to copy works for educational purposes, and the ability to communicate digital copies of works. Non-prescribed libraries do not receive these benefits, but they may apply to become prescribed.
Public domain works – which are not under copyright – can generally be freely accessed, copied, and used. This is of particular benefit to archives who want to make their collections available digitally. Libraries can also benefit from public domain works through initiatives like Project Gutenberg, which makes public domain eBooks available for free.Works licensed under Creative Commons also tend to be freely available; NZGOAL encourages state services and the broader public sector to provide government information either under Creative Commons licenses or in the public domain.
Copyright breaches may have negative consequences for CDHs even when the CDH itself is not responsible for the breach — libraries (and other organisations providing public access) are held responsible, and treated as the guilty party, if their users infringe upon copyright in certain ways.
Copyright thus has many implications for access to and the use of works, including universal access. Current implications may change in the near future, by way of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), of which New Zealand is a signatory. The full text of the TPP has not yet been published, but a leaked chapter suggests that various 50-year copyright limits would be changed to 70-year limits.
Copyright is already problematic for archives. Donors may not be copyright holders, so different copyright owners must be contacted for individual items if access is to be provided. This can be very unwieldy, and copyright-related tasks can account for up to 85% of the time spent on a digitisation project. Requests to digitise material are often met with no response from the rights holder, even after multiple attempts at contact; the same may be true when they are contacted for in regards to general access and use. For this reason, some organisations limit availability to items in simpler situations, such as public domain material. The TPP could restrict this even further, and would also pose significant costs in ensuring that current collections remain compliant with the new copyright rules.
